Category Archives: LKFF2013

A young girl, So-won (Lee Re) is walking to school one day, but instead of being accompanied by her friend as usual, she is on her own. Even though the school is a short distance from her home, she is abducted by a remorseless paedophile and rapist Choi Jong sool (Gang Seong-hae) who brutally assaults her and leaves her for dead. Found, So-won is taken to hospital where she undergoes emergency surgery to try and repair the damage done to her during the merciless attack. As a result So-won is left with major physical and psychological scars and the film charts the slow and painful process of healing of not only So-won but her parents and the wider community. Can Hope/hope persist despite trauma?

Hope is Director LEE’s 9th feature, and a welcome return to cinema for a director who not long ago was contemplating leaving the industry partly as a result of the failure of his engaging 2011 film, Battlefield Heroes, which I personally enjoyed. Hope is Director LEE at his best, dealing deftly with difficult issues in a quiet but heart rendering manner. I met Director LEE in 2012, and he was one of the nicest people, and funniest, that I have ever met. Yet, watching Hope is a devastating experience, seemingly at odds with the Director’s sunny personality. However, the social critique in Hope is a common theme in his films, as is the finely tuned understanding of relationships, particularly here in relation to the family.

While typically such a film would deal with the search and capture and then suitable punishment by the law or outside the law by family members, Hope is more concerned with So-won’s battle back to health, overcoming both her physical and psychological traumas. Signs of the attack are etched through the scars on her face and the ileostomy that she has to wear as in order to live, the surgeons are forced to remove her colon and divert waste into a bag that is attached to a stoma (the small bowel brought out through the stomach). So-won’s devastated parents, Dong-hoon (Sol Kyung-gu) and Mi-hee (Uhm Ji-won), grapple to come to terms with their daughter’s injury and their guilt over her attack. Her father, Dong-hoon struggles to eke out a meagre living at the metalworking factory where he works, while her mother Mi-hee who runs their small grocery store, aptly enough named after their daughter, ‘Wish’s Variety’, is coming to terms with being pregnant with their second child. As working parents, Mi-hee and Dong-hoon are constantly struggling to have enough time together as a family with Dong-hoon so tired at the end of his working day that he leaves the parenting to the equally tired Mi-hee. On the day of the attack, Dong-hoon is called into work early while Mi-hee is opening up the shop, meaning that So-won ends up walking to school on her own. The attack itself is left to the viewer’s imagination; instead shots of the broken and bloody body of So-won in the aftermath of the attack communicate the horrific nature of the assault just as the shots of a broken kite and a rolling bottle of alcohol before the attack signal the horrific nature of what is to come.

Based upon a shocking true event in which a young girl was brutally assaulted and her attacker sentenced to a derisory 12 years by the Court, Director LEE’s film was criticised by some in South Korea for shining a spotlight on the unpalatable existence of child assault and stranger abuse, and in addition for subjecting the family of the original attack to increased media attention. Statistics reported by Bae Hyung-jung in an article originally published in The Korean Herald (03/03/2010), are stark: of ‘5,948 suspects who were investigated on charges of sexual abuse from January 2007 to July of this year, 2501 … were not prosecuted, according to Justice Ministry data. Even among those who were prosecuted, only 0.4 percent were handed down a life sentence and more than 42 percent were fined and 30.5 percent received a suspended term, according to the Health Ministry data.’ It needs to be noted that in the UK, while those who do get convicted get substantially longer sentences there is a history of the non-prosecution and high level cover up of sexual abusers, as highlighted by the Jimmy Saville case. And then there is the all too frequent rape of young girls in India about which little is done. These two current examples (and there are many more sadly)demonstrate that Hope’s message has a much wider application than just related to incidents in South Korea and the particular horrific assault on which the film is loosely based. And in addition to contemporary human rights issues, Hope is one of the few films to represent disability in a direct manner, without being melodramatic in the process. Although in the US alone over 100,000 people a year have surgery for a permanent or temporary ostomy, it remains a taboo topic and relegated to representation in film as the object of revulsion or ridicule. It is refreshing therefore to see how So-won and her parents learn to deal with So-won’s ‘new normal’ (a term widely used in the ostomy community): the embarrassment of the bag leaking while she is in hospital, the rustling of the bag against the skin (and Dong-joon’s ingenious solution to it), her desire to be treated normally and her gradual coming to terms with such a radical change in her bodily integrity.

Together with this refreshing approach to disability and highlighting human rights abuses (and it needs to be noted that most sexual abuse is perpetrated by those known to the child: either other family members or people in authority that they have contact with), Director LEE displays his usual sensitivity and understanding of relationships and how relationships can be broken and then reformed, perhaps encapsulated most fully by the relationship between So-won and Dong-hoon which is pivotal to the emotional resonance of the film. Terrified by men after her attack, So-won retreats into herself and refuses to allow her father to help her. In order to bridge this gap, Dong-hoon dresses up as one of her favourite TV characters, Kokomong, visiting her in hospital and then accompanying her to and from school. While this allows for much needed moments of light relief, I found the relationship between the two to be authentic touching a reality that many directors never get close to. Indeed, it is the subtle and moving performances by Lee Re, Sol Kyung-gu and Uhm Ji-won that together with Director LEE’s subtle and nuanced filmmaking make Hope such an extraordinary cinematic tour-de-force. It is no surprise that the film won the award for the best film at Dragon Film Awards, or that all three of the main actors were recognised for their performances in 2013.

In conclusion, if you are looking for a film about retribution and punishment, then this isn’t the right film, however if you are looking for a film about recovery, redemption and hope, then here it is. Tackling a difficult subject with a great deal of sensitively, this is one of Director LEE’s finest films to date.

Notes

The only other film that I remember dealing with an ostomy is the French Canadian revenge thriller, 7 Days (Daniel Grou, Canada: 2010) and here it is meted out as punishment to the rapist and murderer of a couple’s young daughter. [I do really recommend 7 Days; I found it an extremely powerful piece of cinema, but it is very much the opposite approach to that taken by Director LEE in Hope].

I had a temporary ileostomy when I was much younger and think this is why Hope particularly resonated with me.

The Korean title, So-won, I have been told translates as ‘Wish’ but was changed into Hope for UK and US release as Hope is a girl’s name in English. I have used ‘Hope’ here for the title of the film, but need to put a caveat that actually ‘Wish’ has a much more subtle meeting in Korean ‘To a non-native speaker, maybe less so. Nuance. Wish feels more unattainable? phonetics? wish is softer on the lips and to the ear…wistful, fleeting, sad.’ (thanks to Jin Hee Cho for these words of wisdom).

The Flu that threatens South Korea with disaster is transported into the country by a shipping container from Hong Kong in which a group of illegal immigrants are hiding, hoping for a better life. Instead locked inside the hot and suffocating container, they all succumb to a deadly virus, with the exception of one male survivor. Within hours, a deadly virus is sweeping over Korea and people are dying by the hundreds. Can the beautiful Dr. Kim In-Hae (Soo-ae), whose young daughter becomes infected, discover the cause of the virus and find a cure before it is too late for her daughter and everyone else?

First up, I was one of the few who enjoyed Deranged (PARK Jung-woo: 2012) at last year’s London Korean Film Festival, and secondly, I prefer zombies, and lots of them, or else suitably decaying and abject bodies in a contagion film (yes, I know that I mixing genres to please myself). The emphasis in The Flu was not so much on individual stories of infected families – as is usually the case – but rather the political battle between the president and prime minster and and the US military over the ‘final solution’ to the problem. And indeed, the most effective scenes were the large scale action scenes, rather than the human interactions between Kang Ji-koo (Jang Hyuk) – a rescue worker – and In-hae and Mi-reu (Park Min-ha). which provides the core of the human interest drama and the main focus of audience identification and empathy.

In opposition to the small-scale human drama, the large scale action scenes were gripping and showed Director KIM as having a real deft touch and skill when it comes to action. The scene in which infected people were cold-bloodily shot down and their bodies dumped in a large pit was particularly effective and resonated at a number of levels in relation to real-life acts of genocide including the death pits of Auschwitz. In a subsequent scene, the non-infected but quarantined people, attempt to cross over the line between the excluded zone and the city, as the South Korean military take aim to fire upon them, a visual allusion to the Gwangju massacre in 1980. Neither politicians nor the US military come over particularly well, and indeed it is the US military that insist on the ‘final solution’ – again it is easy to see a correspondence between the fictional here and the factual situation in South Korea where the US military remains in order to police the border between North and South Korea (the so-called DMZ).

While I know this sounds bleak, there are enough crowd pleasing moment in the film that make it an overall enjoyable experience. As I have said, I found the human element of the film not convincing, but the action sequences on their own were executed exceptionally well.

The Q&A

After the screening, most audience members stayed for the Q&A which demonstrates how much they enjoyed the film – as usually the beginning of a Q&A is marked by the mass exodus by the majority of the audience.

Tony Rayns began by discussing the outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong in 2003 and why South Korea had no cases (in fact he relayed an anecdote about a study that seemed to prove that Kimchi [picked cabbage, a staple of the South Korea diet, and very delicious) killed the SARS virus). He also asked about the political implications of the film, some of which I note above in my review. Director KIM was reluctant to admit to an explicit political critique, although he admitted that growing up in South Korea at a time of political repression very likely had an unconscious impact on the narrative and spectacle of the film.

In relation to the mass burials (which for me, as above, resonated in terms of the Holocaust – as it is always about our own cultural frames of references in how we interpret a film), Director KIM talked about the foot and mouth outbreak between 2010-2011 which lead to the mass culling of thousands of pigs as being his point of reference. He talked about the necessity of mass burials happening out of sight so there are no witness (again I cannot help but think about the Holocaust), and said that was his reason for setting the mass murder in a football stadium, which is a space isolated from ordinary life and vision. He went on to say that he used a football stadium to increase the impact of this scene, as a stadium is usually associated with festival and happiness and not despair and death.

There were a number of other questions asked about the use of face masks and dialogue (voices were dubbed in postproduction), the casting of the daughter and an interesting sidebar about there being no regulations to protect child actors in South Korea at the moment. The director admitted that he tried to do his utmost to protect her during the shooting, although at one stage he got her mother to say something to her so that she would cry for real rather than just act sad.

Director KIM finished by saying that he realized that he wasn’t very good at disaster films in line with the typical refreshing honesty of Korean directors to actually admit if they are not altogether happy with their films and wouldn’t be making another one. His next project he said would be an action film. On the basis of this, I shall look forward to it.

At 45 minutes, Coming Out is longer than your average short film and clearly signals the aesthetic and visual vocabulary which will come to define Director Kim’s oeuvre. Hyun-yoo, an attractive young woman, tells her brother, Jae-min, and his girlfriend Ji-eun that she has a secret that she wants to reveal, but will only do it through the mediation of the camera lens. The secret, that she is a vampire, is one that is initially met with disbelief, and she is forced to demonstrate her vampiric nature to Jae-min and Ji-eun, in order to get them to ‘accept’ her difference.

The title of the film makes it clear that the film is not really about vampirism at all (although that could be argued about all vampire texts) , but rather about ‘coming out’ in relation to sexuality. Indeed the figure of the vampire has been used for centuries to articulate desire outside of the heterosexual matrix. Arguably in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Count’s object of desire is not Mina but rather the rather feeble and feminine Jonathon. Mina is merely the object of exchange between men which effectively allows a disavowal of homosexuality and the implication that same-sex desire has a society built upon compulsory heterosexuality.

Theoretically vampiric desires are often interpreted as examples of pre-oedipal oral desires within a Freudian pop perspective, or perhaps more problematically as articulating the subject’s refusal to leave the imaginary and enter into the symbolic and all that entails (the Lacanian perspective). I say problematically because of the association of the imaginary with narcissism which seems to me to deny homosexual desire a symbolic identity (I am thinking here of Judith Butler’s discussion of unintelligibility) and such refusal thereby continues to prop up the patriarchal order. Theory aside, vampires penetrate rather than are penetrated, orally rather than genitally (a good old displacement), which allows the figuration of other desire in a metaphorical form, even though as often the case with female vampires, it merely provides a mise-en-scene of ‘aberrant’ sexuality for the desirous gaze of the male spectator.

Coming Out is aware of the history of the vampire, including the postmodern reinvention of the vampire as a figure no longer doomed to darkness, or threatened by the mere ‘empty’ presence of religious relics. Instead Kim Jee-woon’s vampire walks in daylight, eats solids rather than merely ingests liquids, and certainly does not sleep in a coffin at night. Indeed, the beginning of Coming Out with the brother reporting the tale of his sister’s revelation of her true identity to a reporter, is reminiscent of the opening to Interview with a Vampire (Neil Jordan). At the same time, the fact that Hyun-yoo insists on revealing her identity to the camera means that Coming Out is also a meta-narrative on the very nature of cinema and its relation to reality. This is signalled within the re–enactments of events that took have ‘past’ within the ‘present’ with the actors receiving an onscreen credit when they first appear on screen. In a postmodern celebrity obsessed society, ‘reality is television and television is more than reality’ (and yes, I love quoting from Videodrome [Cronenberg: 1983]). However Jae-min and Ji-eun don’t trust the image and insist that Hyun-yoo demonstrate her vampirism, because seeing is believing after all (a contradictory act which reinforces the primacy of the image as spectacle). Again, this is shown to us through a re-enactment, as with a comic touch Hyun-woo deflowers a young Korean schoolgirl in a ‘red’ phonebox, after which they share a cigarette. There is nothing subtle about Coming Out, but then it is not meant to be subtle, Director Kim is not asking the audience to interpret the image but rather to recognise the image for what it is. This is apparent when Ji-eun’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she desires to be bitten and experience the ecstasy that such an act promises. Hyun-yoo concedes to Ji-eun’s desire, and bites Ji-eun on the inner thigh, making the implicit sexual penetration of the vampiric act an explicit depiction of lesbian desire.

Even within the low-budget format of Coming Out, Director Kim’s sense of aesthetic beauty which finds its fulfilment in abject horror is apparent as demonstrated by the painterly canvas with its broad brush strokes of red splattered against a white background which constitutes the cinematic mise-en-scene. The fact that Hyun-yoo having ‘come out’ on camera, then flees to Europe and more specifically to England is a telling fact on the repression of sexual difference in South Korea at the time and indeed where sexual diversity is still not celebrated or fully accepted these days. Coming Out is an important film, both in terms of Kim Jee-woon’s development as a director but also in terms of LGBT cinema in South Korea.

It was a shame that I wasn’t aware of this short when writing about queer cinema in the forthcoming ‘Directory of World Cinema: South Korea’ (Intellect, September 2013), but it will certainly find its way into the next one. [Sorry about the plug folks]

The opening film of this year’s London Korean Film Festival, Hide and Seek is a fairly effective variation on the home invasion film. Director Huh’s debut, Hide and Seek was a surprise box-office smash at the South Korean box-office, keeping the big-budget blockbuster, The Flu (Kim Sung-su) from the top.

In Hide and Seek, a bourgeois family, Sung-soo (Son Hyun-joo), his wife (Jeon Mi-sun) and two children, Soo-A (Kim Soo-ahn) and Ho-Se (Jung Joon-won) find their palatial home in an exclusive apartment complex under threat when Sung-soo attempts to find his estranged brother, who he thinks has been spying on him and his family. Sung-soo runs into a middle-aged mother Joo-hee (Moon Jung-hee) and her strange daughter, Pyeong-hwa (Kim Ji-young), who appear at first to be helpful when visiting the run-down and condemned apartment complex where his brother lives. Appearances, however, are deceptive in Hide and Seek, and is it really the estranged brother who is the threat to Sung-soo’s domestic harmony?

The film is nicely shot, and the contrast between the poor and the rich is expressed in visual terms, as a question of space and place, of those that have and those that have not reminding us of the fact that South Korea’s economic miracle was built on the back of workers who were asked to sacrifice their present for the bourgeois future, in which they had no place. The unsympathetic bourgeois family is a convention of the home invasion film, which in South Korea, finds its finest expression in Kim Ki-young’s 1960 masterpiece The Housemaid/Hanyeo. However, because we do not know who the threat to the family is, our sympathies are not split in the way in which they are in The Housemaid, and we do not long for the family’s destruction in quite the same way.

With a number of effective jumps, and twists and turns, Hide and Seek is well worth seeing, especially on the big screen. My only issue was that there was a rather large plothole that was never explained which has to do with Sung-soo’s brother, and it left me with unresolved questions. I believe that this particular narrative thread had been excised due to the running-time, but I would have liked to see it having been left in. I am hopeful for a director’s cut which will include the deleted scenes when the film, as it surely should, makes its way onto DVD. And I look forward with great anticipation to Director Huh’s next film.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to interview one of my favourite South Korean directors, Kim Jee-woon for the second time. If I remember correctly, Director Kim was the first director that I ever interviewed. At least this time, I was less terrified and overwhelmed by the experience. As before, Director Kim was charming and his responses thoughtful. There was some confusion about whether the interview was a group or individual, and I had prepared for a group interview, so my questions would have been different if I had realised that I was going to be given the opportunity to interview him one-to-one. I only had fifteen minutes, so managed to ask just three questions.

CB: One of the issues in the news at the moment is about cuts to Korean films for international release, e.g. Snowpiercer. In opposition, the international DVD release of I Saw the Devil is different to the Korean DVD release (which we got in the UK). Such changes, as in the case of I Saw the Devil, and The Good, The Bad and The Weird, alter the meaning of the film. How do you feel about having to make changes to your own films for different markets?

KJW: Director Kim explained that the reasons for the differences in the international and Korean cuts of I Saw the Devil and The Good, The Bad and The Weird were different. In relation to I Saw the Devil, cuts were made because the Korean system does not have a restrictive (R or 18) rating, therefore if he had not made cuts in terms of the graphic violence then I Saw the Devil would not have received a theatrical release in Korea (which is a shame because the cannibalism scenes were the most interesting for me). With The Good, The Bad and The Weird, it was necessary to get the film edited quickly in order for it to be entered into competition at Cannes. In this case, it was the Korean version that was the Director’s cut, as he had longer to actually edit together and produce his directorial version. Normally therefore it is the Korean versions that should be taken as the director’s cut.

Commentary: I asked this question in light of the ongoing debate about whether Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer will be cut for the international release and also in light of the fact that last year when writing a book chapter about Director Kim’s I Saw The Devil, I mistakenly ended up with the Korean DVD cut of the film and not the international cut. While the Korean cut of I Saw the Devil is longer by 2 minutes I think, most of the references and scenes to do with cannibalism had been cut and replaced with either exposition or in one case an extended sex scene. As I was writing about cannibalism, this then proved to be slightly difficult for me. I was also aware that the international version of The Good, The Bad and the Weird was different to the Korean cut. While such strategies may well be seen as necessary in terms of localization, the end result is that a film’s meaning is altered by such changes. Of course, the worst example of this is Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985), which when released as Creepers with half an hour missing which rendered the film unintelligible.

In relation to Director Kim’s response, it is interesting to know that in most cases (with the exception of I Saw the Devil and Director Park’s Thirst) the Korean version should be taken as the director’s cut.

CB: You lived in France for a while. How important was this in terms of your subsequent career? (it seems to me that France always made less distinction between art and genre cinema – which is what defines your films.

KJW: I spent 5 months travelling around Europe and 3 months in Paris, during which time I watched over 100 films which gave me a wealth of cinematic knowledge and understanding.

Commentary: There was a bit of mistranslation going on here, and I don’t think Director Kim knew what I was asking (or it might be that I was being a bit unclear with my phrasing of the question). For me the striking feature of Korean cinema is its affinity with French cinema, and my point here was that the type of distinctions between art and genre cinema in French cinematic thought and practice are not mutually exclusive as they tend to be elsewhere. You only have to look at the fact that films by Mario Bava and Dario Argento, both Italian horror film directors, were premiered in France at art-house cinemas, whereas in the US they were much more likely to have appeared on double bills of exploitation cinema for the drive-in crowds.

CB: Despite the fact that The Last Stand opened to mixed reviews, I have read that you are attached to another English language feature Coward. What lessons have you learnt from The Last Stand that you will be able to put to use with Coward? (based upon graphic novels).

KJW: The Last Stand was difficult as the studio system in the US is very different to the system in South Korea. The shorting days were shorter, as was the shoot itself. In the US, you are answerable to producers, the studio, actors, assistant directors and thus has less say over the final product. Having experienced this, I believe that it will be easier making Coward as I now understand how the system operates. I also feel as it is a noir film that it will fit in with my style better.

Commentary: I was particularly interested to read that he had signed on for another English-language production despite the fact that The Last Stand had not done particularly well either critically or commercially, unlike Park Chan-wook’s Stoker which did very well critically although not commercially. Very few foreign directors had managed the transition, especially those who have a very strong directorial signature. The horror stories about experiences with studios that foreign directors have had are well-known. At the same time, I fully understand a director’s desire to take on additional challenges and be able to address the widest audience possible, and have no problems with the fact that foreign directors attempt to make this transition. Success stories though are few, John Woo mainly managed it, Hideo Nakata flunked badly and Dario Argento said that after the experience of Trauma he would never again make a film in the US again (one can only wish that he had kept to this promise).

Do I think that Director Kim will have a better experience this time? I am not sure, I hope he does, but at the same time fear that his strong aesthetic sensibility and imagistic vocabulary will be contained. I live in hope and wish Director Kim the best of luck.

Thanks to the Korean Cultural Centre UK for arranging the interview, and of course to Director Kim for being so generous with his time. Apologies for any mistakes in transcribing his responses.

The reviews of Director Kim’s shorts and the Q&A session that followed will be posted shortly.

This year sees the 8th London Korean Film Festival with premieres, retrospectives and a variety of film-related events. The Festival takes place between 7th and 16th in November, with additional screenings in Bradford and Oxford between 16th and 22nd November. Year on Year, the LKFF continues to grow and offers audiences a diverse range of Korean films from children’s films, animation, romantic comedies to art house independent cinema.

MY TOP PICKS

Thursday, 7th November 2013 – Opening Gala: Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek/Soombakkokjil (dir. HUH Jung: 2013). This low-budget thriller topped the Korean Box-Office on its release in August, and looks intriguing and hopefully suitably creepy. After the film will be a Q&A with actor SON Hyun-joo and Korean film expert Tony Rayns.

Venue: Odeon West End. Time: 7:00 pm.

Saturday 9th November 2013 – Rough Play & Kim Jee-Woon Shorts

Rough Play/Baewooneun (dir. SHIN Yeon-shick, 2013). This drama stars Lee Joon of the K-Pop group, MBLAQ, and I am anticipating hoards of screaming girls judging by the posts under the trailer on the Asian Wiki page. And the screenplay was written by KIM Ki-Duk, enough said then.

Pluto/Myungwangsung (dir. SHIN Su-won, 2012). This critique of the highly competitive Korean education system has been garnering rave reviews, especially in terms of the uniqueness of the cinematic style. One not to be missed and SHIN Su-won seems to be a force to be reckoned with on the basis of the success of his directorial debut.

Venue: Odeon Covent Garden. Time: 8.45 pm.

Monday 11th November 2013 – Flu

The Flu/Gamgi (dir. KIM Sung-woo, 2013). Very timely given the time of year, this is one film where the addition of sniffs and sneezes from the audience will function to add to the atmosphere rather than the irritation. This is followed by a Q&A with director KIM Sung-woo.

Venue: Odeon Covent Garden. Time: 7:00 pm.

Tuesday 12th November 2013 – Korean Cinema Forum & Hope

Korean Cinema Forum. Directors KANG Woo-suk and KIM Sung-soo and film critics Tony Rayns and OH Dong-jim will be on hand to answer questions and give insights into the Korean Film Industry. Always a good choice.

Venue: KCCUK. Time: 4:00 pm.

Wednesday 13th November 2013 – Behind the Camera & Hope

Behind the Camera/Dwitdamhwa: Gamdokyi Micheotseoyo (dir. E J-yong, 2013). This mockumentary is by one of Korea’s most interesting contemporary directors and is followed by a Q&A with the director and actress YOUN Yuh-jung.

I was lucky enough to chat with the director LEE Joon-ik last year, and he was a really lovely man whose films never fail to please. I am so pleased that threats of abandoning the film industry have not come true, LEE Joon-ik would be a real loss if he stopped making such engaging films – although this one seems to be darker than usual. I am really looking forward to this one. [This is also showing on Thursday at the Kingston Odeon]

Venue: Odeon Covent Garden . Time: 6:00 pm.

Thursday 14th November 2013 – Fatal

Fatal/Gashi Ggot (LEE Don-ku: 2013), Odeon Panton Street, 6:30 pm. Can you ever be forgiven or indeed forgive yourself for complicity in an act of sexual violence? Director LEE Don-ku’s film grapples with an emotive topic with sensitivity and nuance.

Venue: Odeon Panton Street. Time: 6:30 pm.

Friday 15th November 2013 – Closing Gala – Boomerang Family

Boomerang Family (dir. SONG Hae-sung), Seeing my picks have all been a bit gloomy as I veer towards the dark side in my cinematic choices, it seems apt that the box-topping comedy, Boomerang Family closes the London strand of the Festival and should cheer me up. The film is followed by a Q&A with director SONG Hae-sung, actors YOON Je-moon and YOUN Yuh-jung, and critic Tony Rayns.

Credit goes to Philip Gowman of London Korean Links for putting together the schedule from which I have used rather liberally here. His painstaking work can be found here Full Schedule London Korean Film Festival.